The right-wing (plus some alleged liberals cough Singal cough) assault on trans kids is genuinely horrifying. Literally hundreds of anti-trans bills – most focused on trans people under 19 years old – are proposed every year, and some succeed in becoming law.
Unfortunately, it’s obvious which side the conservative majority of the Supreme Court is on. Earlier this month, regarding California’s policy of not outing trans students to their parents, the Court ruled:
Gender dysphoria is a condition that has an important bearing on a child’s mental health, but when a child exhibits symptoms of gender dysphoria at school, California’s policies conceal that information from parents and facilitate a degree of gender transitioning during school hours. These policies likely violate parents’ rights to direct the upbringing and education of their children.
In her dissent, Judge Kagen noted that the conservative majority’s concern for parents’ rights has been inconsistent.
Another contrast—this time, between this case and United States v. Skrmetti (2025)—is also striking. In Skrmetti, several parents challenged Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. The suit raised claims grounded in both equal protection and substantive due process. As to the latter, the parents in Skrmetti, similarly to the parents here, asserted a right “to make decisions concerning medical care for their minor children.” …And in support of that right, the Skrmetti parents relied on the same precedents the Court does today. But the Court, when deciding to grant certiorari in Skrmetti, limited its review to the equal protection issue: It would not even hear the parents out on their substantive due process claim.
This is typical of Republican hypocrisy – in the courts, but also in the way everyday Republicans talk about parental rights. As journalist Chris Quinn put it, “Republicans always say the parents know best, except when the Republicans know better.”
Some Republicans square this circle by saying that gender affirmative care for minors is child abuse (a claim they support with lies about what the research shows), and child abuse is the exception to parental rights.
But necessary medical treatments, supported by the overwhelming majority of experts and legitimate medical organizations, aren’t child abuse because Republicans arbitrarily declare it so.
Even if you, dear reader, happen to be a centrist weenie who can “see both sides” of this issue, that in and of itself is an argument for keeping gender affirmative care for minors legal. If this issue is complex and multifaceted, that’s even more reason that a minor’s medical care needs should not be decided by random Republican legislators.
Republican legislators don’t know Sam Examplekid; they don’t love Sam Examplekid; they have no familiarity with Sam’s needs or background or condition or individual circumstances. The decision should lie with people who know Sam and are committed to Sam Examplekid’s well-being – Sam, Sam’s parents, and Sam’s doctors.
TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON
This cartoon has for panels, showing two women talking as they walk through a hilly park. The woman in front has dark hair and is wearing a red t-shirt; the person in the rear has light brown hair and is wearing floral pants. I’ll call them TSHIRT and FLORAL.
PANEL 1
Tshirt is listening as Floral lectures.
FLORAL: Of course teachers should be legally required to “out” trans kids to their parents. Because of parents’ rights.
PANEL 2
FLORAL: It doesn’t matter if it’s outing trans kids, or vaccinations, or what books teachers are allowed to assign. It should always be up to the parents!
PANEL 3
Close-up on Flora, who is pounding a fist into her palm, very intense.
FLORAL: Parents’ rights are sacrosanct! Period!
PANEL 4
Tshirt turns to ask Floral a question; Floral replies cheerily.
TSHIRT: What if parents want their trans kid to have gender affirming care?
FLORAL: Fuck parents’ rights.
CHICKEN FAT WATCH
“Chicken fat” is a long-obscure cartoonists’ term for unimportant but amusing details slipped into the art, which I want to bring back. (“Stop trying to make fetch happen!”)
PANEL 1: A grinning kid is hanging upside-down high in a tree. A notice nailed to the tree shows a sad-looking robot and says “NOTICE: Background gags weren’t made by A.I.” On the ground, Steamboat Willie (the earliest form of Mickey Mouse, now copyright-free) is fleeing from a vicious cat.
PANEL 2: An evil-looking bunny is behind the bush, smoking a cig. High in a tree, a rat has disguised itself as a squirrel by taping a big leaf to its real end, and is trying to pass itself off to a real squirrel. A notice nailed to the tree has a picture of an evilly grinning robot and says “NOTICE: Then again isn’t that what an A.I. would say.”
PANEL 3: On top of a cloud, a cloud-colored person with a mohawk is lying on their back and reading their phone.
PANEL 4: A basset hound is in the hole in the tree. A sign below the hole says “Home Sweet Hole.” The robot from the notices in panels 1 and 2 is hiding behind the tree. Steamboat Willie’s lifeless corpse lies in the grass. A notice nailed to another tree shows a picture of a vague shadow shape, and says “MISSING: Small robot which functions as a visual representation of A.I. in background gags. Extremely hackneyed, but functional.”
T-SHIRT: In panel 1, the t-shirt has a logo of a piece of cake. Panel 2, it’s a peace sign. And in panel 4, it’s a chess piece.
Yes, according to “conservatives,” parents have the right to beat their children in the name of discipline, homeschool or send them to schools that will force-feed them propaganda, let them get sick or die with diseases vaccines prevent, and teach them dangerous ideas about purity, the Rapture, bigotry and misogyny. But if I support my trans kid (which I did) by letting him wear the clothes he wants to wear and cut his hair short, well, that should be a crime.
Conservatives love Parents’ Rights exactly as much as they love States’ Rights and Free Speech.
Delagar, I’ve been thinking about that a lot this week – that the same people who say it’s okay to ban trans health care because “child abuse” also think it’s fine for parents to hit their children.
@Amp:
Yeah, but beating kids is punishment while gender affirming care is not. For an awful lot of those folks, cruelty really is the point.
It’s usually the case that when people talk about rights they care less about the right as an independent principle, but care about an outcome, and the right is a tactical tool to reach that outcome.
Or to put it another way, the right almost everybody cares about is the right of people they agree with to do things they want to be done, and they don’t care about the right of people they disagree with to do things they dislike.
Since you don’t mention it in the chicken fat list it must be just pareidolia that makes me see the head of a reclining figure in profile in the lower-left cloud of panel 3?
That wasn’t on purpose, but now that you mention it, I see it too. Neat.
The two positions can be reconciled if you consider attempting to change a child’s gender (especially but not only through surgery and/or hormones) child abuse. A parent has a right to protect their child against abuse but does not have a right to commit it.
Ron, that’s addressed in the post:
It’s interesting to compare this Republican argument to the typical Republican argument about parents hitting children as punishment (including things like spankings). Lots of people consider that abuse; to that, Republicans say “I don’t agree” and argue that, rather than being banned by the government, corporeal punishment should, in most cases, be something families decide for themselves. Even though many people (and experts) say it’s abuse.
“corporeal punishment”! ***snerk***
I, for one, would have preferred incorporeal punishment as a child.
LOL!
This is not consistent with the known results of allowing gender affirming care to transgender children. Those who are allowed to express their gender publicly and receive supportive treatment to increase their acceptance as their true gender do better in terms of mental health and social interactions than those who were forced into a gender that is not their own. In short, the “child abuse” of allowing a child to access gender affirming care results in their being healthier, happier, and more socially adept. People who consider making their child healthier and happier to be abuse are not living in reality and one must question their fitness for parenthood.
That’s not a right: it’s a responsibility.
If the argument is that gender affirming methods for children are unconscionable horrific abuse that should never be permitted for children regardless of parental or medical support, then why don’t they say it like that instead of immediately invoking parental sovereignty and ownership of children as the paramount decisive objection?
Considering something to be categorically bad and impermissible doesn’t seem to square with invoking “parental rights” as the first grievance. If your first objection to the rape of children is “what about parents’ rights?!,” that makes it sound like you believe parents should have the right to decide if their children are raped, rather than that rape is always violence and abuse that should never be permitted.
I would think denying one’s children vital life-saving medical care and letting them suffer and die from preventable causes like diabetes or pneumonia is definitely child abuse. But wouldn’t you know it? There are some states which provide extensive or even total immunity to parents who do just that in the name of their religion.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularspectrum/2016/01/idahos-faith-exemptions-are-killing-children/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/13/followers-of-christ-idaho-religious-sect-child-mortality-refusing-medical-help
Conservative politicians have bluntly said that since children die for all sorts of reasons, it’s perfectly okay (and even inspiring) for children to die for their parents’ beliefs rejecting rational modern medicine.
https://www.salon.com/2015/02/25/republican_lawmaker_its_ok_for_children_to_die_in_the_name_of_god_partner/
https://www.rawstory.com/2015/02/idaho-republican-backs-faith-healer-parents-if-i-want-to-let-my-child-be-with-god-why-is-that-wrong/
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2017/apr/25/shawn-vestal-idaho-lawmakers-stand-up-again-for-th/
So probably many of the same people vehemently denouncing trans healthcare as abominable abuse don’t have a problem with inflicting injury and death upon children per se, so long as that injury and death are aligned with belief systems they favor.
And to the surprise of almost nobody here, the lobbies opposing trans healthcare have admitted that focusing on children was just the starting pretext and that they are dead set on obliterating it completely for anyone, no matter their age.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/17/children-gender-affirming-trans-care-trump